Sunshine Tea Lounge

What a lovely night and a good chance to talk to people i had never met before. After having arrived at the secret location, the private adress was Unilocaled to us beforehand, we walked in and were greeted by Susan and welcomed in to the lovely flat complete with many decorations, relaxing music, a moodwall in the kitchen and all of the Sunshine Tea Lounge’s ideas and what is to be created when the premises are set up.
Now this was set up in a residential address and Susan did a terriffic job putting out restaurant quality dishes from a home kitchen and she was so warm and welcoming with people free to wander around and through the kitchen as she was cooking which was really nice.
We started with spicy prawn crackers scattered around the place while we chatted to susan and Nikki’s friends converting them to Unilocal and such with a lemon, ginger and mint drink which was super fresh and summery and put me in the right mood for a second round at the food (i really loved the first night with Susan, so much that i singed up again lol!). Started off with crispbreads and a lotus dip which is susan’s own creation through experimentation with hummus and chinese flavours which was delicious and surprisingly not heavy as most fried things are. Second we tried the lotus root crisps (my personal favorite) which were crunchy full of flavour and when combined with the afforementioned lotus dip were excellent! Next came some lovely green peppers in a garlic and black bean sauce which rapidly dissapeared.
A nice wee break from the taste explosions was a green asian style salad with sesame seeds on top which was a nice wee burst of freshness for the pallette before moving on with some hoisin chicken wings following close behind! These were stick, flavorful and delicious!
Onto the main! We were served up firecracker rice with either a chicken or veg variety of curry which was very tasty with many flavours coming out from the background. It was creamy, well cooked and went great with the rice! After chatting to Susan throughout the night she mentioned that this recipe and the sauce mixes before could be catered to different spice levels which is a bonus to us hotheads lol.
Onto the dessert which consisted of orange and cardomum cakes which were full of flavour and happily bite sized with soemj mochi made with yellow sweet potato in coconut. Now ive tried two of susans mochi creations and loved them both, this is surprising as ive tried mochi in a variety of places and always ahted the consistency but loved these! Score a full 10 points for susan on these!
All in all a very interesting night, finding out more about Sunshine Tea Lounge, cahtting to many people to whom Unilocal is a mystery to be discovered and chatting to a variety of people complete with a great host and lovely food. Susan has a pop up in about 2 weeks time at gesso which i advise going to! Ill be absent as im down south *sadface*.
I will definetly be going here when she opens! :)

What a lovely concept, from the board about usp (unique selling points), to the food and everything in between.
I attended last night’s sunshinee soirée with a mix of Unilocalers and Susan and Nicki’s friends. Within 10 minutes of arriving, I was gabbing away to complete strangers who had never heard of Unilocal.But they were intrigued by the concept.
The mocktail on offer was a rather refreshing mint, ginger, lemonade. It tasted so healthy and summer-​like. Only added by the gorgeous sunlight streaming into the location.
The food was great. Having never tried Lotus before, I can safely say I am a Lotus lover. I loved the first lotus dip with the lotus flatbread. The homemade sweet chilli sauce was also another favourite, as was the sirachi mix. I could personally have done with more spice. Although Susan said, she would give dinners a range of spiced dips when she opens. I also loved the chicken curry, but again could have been spicier!
I will definitely be visiting the Gesso pop-​up next month.

The idea of the Sunshine Soirée is to mingle with other diners in an informal, relaxing environment and sample Asian cuisine. It was a £10 donation — to cover ingredients, décor, and towards start up costs of the Sunshine Tea Lounge business — and BYOB.
We were shown around the secret location (address private messaged to attendees a couple of days before) and presented with a refreshing ginger & lime mocktail. There were little dish name cards spread out on a table but I didn’t note them all down so I may be slightly off with descriptions.
There were around 20 guests and we spread ourselves out in different rooms, some people sitting on a sofa or on provided chairs, and some of us standing. This wasn’t an official Unilocal event but there were quite a few of us Unilocalers there.
First dish up was two bowls of lotus root dip and fried crispbreads. This was one of my favourite dishes of the night, the dip had lots of flavour and the breads were delicious. Next was the lotus root crisps with a lotus root dip, this one a bit more creamy in consistency than the previous ones. The crisps were very thin so these were not really as suited for a dipping style, but also tasted great. Following this were green peppers in a garlic and black bean sauce — this was very tasty and I could have eaten a bowl of this to myself easily. We then had a salad of greens and carrot topped with sesame seeds, and some hoisin chicken wings were also brought out.
Next was firecracker rice with either a vegetable curry or a chicken curry. As the plates that had come out were for sharing with a large group of people I was quite hungry by this point and was looking forward to loading up in carbs. The curry was nice, very mild. I did wonder what happened to the dumplings as I’d seen place cards for different varieties of dumpling — and mentions of them on social media for tonight’s event, but none ever materialised.
Lastly, there were desserts of orange and cardamom cakes, and sweet potato mochi in a coconut sauce — the latter being suitable also for vegans. Again, these were all shared and self service, so I felt I had to be considerate with watching portion sizes. It was good to be able to chat with chef & host, Susan, at the end of the night about the food and other Chinese dishes. I have opted to give it a 4 as although I enjoyed the event, the Unilocal event a few weeks ago — where there were only 8 people — looked a bit better in that everyone had a seat to themselves for the evening, their own portions of food, and more opportunity for chat about the Sunshine Tea Lounge concept — discussing the mood boards, etc. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for future events; unfortunately I can’t make Susan’s pop-​up in two weeks’ time but I hope to make another of her events soon!